December 06, 2012

Name Your Hood Initiative Kicks Off in Gugulethu

Residents can't wait to submit their names for streets in Gugulethu for the Name Your Hood inititative

The Name Your Hood initiative is set to create a sense of pride and identity in one of South Africa’s most famous townships, Gugulethu.

Name Your Hood kicked off in the City Bowl in November last year and following that success has just launched in Gugulethu – heralding the first campaign of its kind in the townships of South Africa. In total, eight neighbourhoods and 91 streets have been targeted in Gugulethu.

Name Your Hood allows people to take ownership of the area where they live, work and play by naming it. It’s like Idols for naming places – you get to submit neighbourhood names and then to vote for your favourites in an inclusive, democratic campaign which is run both online, on mobile and in print.

And now the focus is on Gugulethu, where, unbelievably, most streets still have the NY prefix – which refers to Native Yards. Name Your Hood is going to change all of that by not only establishing cool neighbourhood names, but also providing a service to the City of Cape Town to run the process to rename 91 NY streets.

The Name Your Hood initiative is a City of Cape Town funded project. Says Cllr Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee Member: Transport, Roads and Stormwater: "The City welcomes the involvement of the NYH team in this important identity-building exercise. With their expert knowledge and practical experience, we hope to see a creative, exciting and inclusive process that will allow everyone in Gugulethu to have their say. The proposed new street names flowing from this public participation process will be forwarded to the City, for its consideration as part of a formal renaming process, similar to what was recently concluded with other streets."

The process to name the "hoods" and rename the streets in Gugulethu went live on 12 November, and the suggestions are now pouring in with the first "hood" announcement scheduled for 15 December. Eight neighbourhoods in total will be named in Gugulethu between now and the end of March 2013. The winning names will be selected by the City of Cape Town ’s Public Participation Unit (project manager of the Name Your Street campaign).

Anyone can take part in the renaming process, and it’s a fun and democratic way of bringing about change.

If you’d like to participate in Name Your Hood, click here to find out more.

Here are a few images of the launch in Gugulethu:

Bruce Good (speaker) describes the Name Your Hood process while Luvuyo Toni (jacket) and Moshe Apleni look on

Luyuyo Toni (Name Your Hood project manager) addresses the audience at the launch of the City's campaign to rename streets in Gugulethu